U.S. President Donald Trump poses for a photo with China's President Xi Jinping before their bilateral meeting during the G20 leaders summit in Osaka, Japan, June 29, 2019.
The mere prospect of a U.S.-China trade deal is enough to send global markets higher.
On Monday stateside, the S&P 500 , Dow Jones Industrial Average and Nasdaq Composite closed at record highs, as did Japan's Nikkei 225 and South Korea's Kospi during Asian trading hours. European stocks rose too, but the Stoxx 600 was just an inch away from its all-time high.
And that's before an agreement has been signed officially.
"A lot of the forecasts for technology have been without the benefit of China, so once you can add China back into the equation, that would probably be fairly optimistic for the markets," Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research, told CNBC.
Nvidia, for instance, gave an estimate for the current quarter that excludes H20 shipments to China — a reminder of how trade restrictions have complicated the outlook for U.S. tech giants.
A formal U.S.-China deal that clarifies — and perhaps loosens — trade parameters could prompt Big Tech companies to raise their guidance, potentially igniting another wave of buying in a market already dominated by tech heavyweights.
Beyond silicon and software, soybeans are back in play. Reports suggest China may ease its unofficial boycott of U.S. soybeans as part of the agreement. That would go some way toward assuaging Scott Bessent's pain because he's not just the U.S. Treasury Secretary, but also "a soybean farmer," as he put it in a televised interview.
While Bessent meant that literally — he owns soybean farmland — in the broad trade war between China and the U.S., trade tensions have made daily life more difficult for most of us, turning us all into reluctant farmers of one kind or another. A truce, if it comes, might let everyone harvest some peace.